The present invention generally relates to a system and method for monitoring a fleet of vehicles, for example, a fleet of taxi cabs, rental cars, or commercial trucks. More particularly, the invention relates to a tire pressure monitoring system that is used on a fleet of vehicles that must pass over or through a certain location.
Various types of devices monitor and provide indications of tire pressure. These known devices provide tire pressure information collected while the vehicle is moving and displayed to the vehicle driver. Other approaches use additional electronics to calibrate the tire location on the vehicle. These and other remote tire pressure monitoring systems are deficient in several respects. First, the expense and complexity of recalibration to determine the exact tire location is unnecessary when this expense can be eliminated by simply checking the tire pressure on the side of the vehicle with a low pressure alert message. Furthermore, prior systems inadequately address the problem of identifying damaged or non-responding transmitters that monitor tire pressure. Additionally, the prior art does not address problems with overlapping codes among different individual systems, or false pressure readings from the tires of one vehicle being erroneously received and processed by a receiver on another vehicle. These problems are accentuated with a fleet of vehicles. Furthermore, the prior art does not address avoiding excessive power drain for batteries powering the monitoring devices during periods when the tires are not being monitored, or need not be monitored.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a tire pressure monitoring system and method that addresses these problems and concerns.